YOUR Spiritual Battle & the Armor of God

Priscilla Shirer speaks at the 2023 Passion Conference for TBN’s Praise. Gain strength and wisdom for your spiritual battles as Priscilla boldly calls out the schemes placed against you, and the distractions we all fall into when we don’t know how to effectively wear the armor of God.

Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week..

Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

He wants you to point fingers at him or at her, at your boss, at your parent, at that particular professor or your R A in your dorm.
He wants you to think it’s that advisor. It’s that financial problem.
Anything flesh and blood because he knows as long as we’re looking at the flesh and blood, we will direct all the wrong weapons at the wrong culprit.
I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am to be here.
Thrilled finally to be at passion. This is my first time being at passion.
I, I’m the new kid on the block. Thank you for making the new kid feel welcome.
It is a privilege to be a part of what God has already been doing through this movement for these years, these decades that God has been sowing seed into the lives of, of you.
Y’all. Y’all don’t even know what it is that the Lord has in store for. You can’t even imagine.
I’m trying to tell you that whatever is in your mind right now about what God might do with your life.
It is too small for what he’s actually planning to do too small, you cannot fathom what God has in mind for you.
The reason why I can say that with that much boldness is because while there are 30 plus 1000 of us that are gathered together in these three arenas and then those that are on the other side of the screen in their homes.
30,000 sounds like a big number.
Unless you consider the fact that with seven plus billion people on the planet, the fact that he let us be the ones that are recipients of what he’s done over these last few weekends.
Really is just our last few days. Really? It’s just a drop in the bucket. 30,000. Sounds like a lot.
But in the grand scheme of all the people that could have been here, y’all, he chose us.
That means he intended for you to know you’re an arrow that your expectation is that you’re getting ready to go places.
The likes of which you could never imagine. Oh, I like y’all. Y’all talk back to me.
I go to that kind of a church where they talk back.
You know, I go to the kind of church where if the preaching gets really good to us, we might throw something at the pastor, a shoe, a baby.
Anything might go flying up there. Y’all are my people. Y’all came to have church.
So I have three boys.
Um It’s a little bit scary to me that they are nearly, it will be very soon in the next few years will be about your age.
Three sons. The distinguishing characteristic about my boys is that they are giants. They are huge boys.
My 15 year old is six ft two inches tall. He wears a size 14 men’s shoe.
My 13 year old is about 61. He wears a 13 men’s shoe and uh, they tower over me.
I have a nine year old who’s coming up in the ranks with his brothers. They are tall boys.
Somebody come, help me feed these people and one of the distinguishing characteristics about or, or what makes their size work for them rather is that they do love sports.
So, whatever sport is sort of in season, that’s what we’re playing at the time.
My second son for a lot of years, he’s into basketball now, but for a lot of years, baseball was his thing and I enjoyed that.
I enjoyed baseball season. I liked going out there for spring ball.
I like spring ball because you go sit in the cool of the evening while your kid is practicing.
I remember all those years of, of Little League when he was just coming up and we’d sit out there in the cool of the spring evening under the lights of the bleachers, watching him practice and enjoying just, uh, that, that whole atmosphere.
I like spring ball so much.
The only problem with spring ball is that it is going to become summer ball and I don’t know what happens where you live, wherever you’re coming from.
But I can’t tell you in Dallas Texas, which is where I still live and where I was born and raised in Dallas Texas in the summer time, it doesn’t warm up slightly.
It gets hot. I’m talking about slap your mama hot. That kind of hot.
The kind of hot where you feel like the sun must be mad at you about something like you did something to the sun and the sun is trying to get you back all summer long.
That’s what it feels like. And you’re sitting out there at a game trying to enjoy your kid’s game and it really still is ok when there’s just one game.
The problem is that at the end of every season, there’s a tournament.
So you gotta be out there on the Thursday at eight AM and 10 AM and noon and two PM.
And then depending upon how your kids team did, you’re gonna have to come back on Friday at eight AM and 10 AM and then they give you a little lunch break, but you got to come back for the two PM game, the four PM game.
And then if your kid’s team had the nerve to do, well, you got to come back again on Saturday for the eight AM game and 10 AM and noon and two and man, you’re sitting out there under the blazing Sun trying to be happy that your kid is doing well.
Really? You’re wondering if it’s ever ok to pray to lose. So you can go home.
I will never confirm nor deny that I have ever done that.
But I will tell you that we were sitting out there at a tournament.
So several years ago, sun was blazing.
We were so excited for the lunch break just because that meant we would be able to go to a restaurant where there would be air conditioned and ice water that actually had ice in it.
We got refreshed, we came back, we drove our S U V up into the parking lot, opened up the back of the S U V so that we could pull out all the gear that we needed to go to the next game in the tournament.
We were three days into the tournament, hot, sweaty. They were doing well.
We were trying to be excited about it ready for the next game.
I was walking behind my son to get from where we had parked the car over toward the dug out where the next game was gonna be played.
And so I gathered up all the stuff, you know, the ice chest that you have and the, um, the umbrella that you might have to go over your head and you know, the water bottles, the, the backpacks, the, the baseballs, the mitts, all that stuff.
And I was following behind my son, my second son, Jerry Junior is a fairly gregarious personality. He’s outgoing.
He’s excited for a challenge. So I could see that in his step.
As I followed behind him, I could see a skip in his step, his chin was up, his shoulders were back.
He was excited about the next game. And I got, I tell you, he’s pretty good in baseball.
He has a natural knack for it.
I remember at 10 years old was the first time he got a good hit and sent it sailing over the fence line at 10 years old.
And I think it’s partly because of his size, just a lot of power behind his swing, great as a first baseman.
So we were really excited about his success in baseball and, and I watched him as he kind of hopped and skipped over to the next game.
Just excited about the next challenge in the tournament.
But because I was following behind him, I had my eyes glued on him and I could see when something changed.
I could see that as we took the short walk from where we parked the car over to the dugout.
I could see that his shoulder started to hunch over and his head hung down.
I could see that, that, that skip that had been in his step. It changed.
He was kind of walking like he was nervous. He was wringing his hands a little bit.
I saw that he was looking around, his eyes darting and looking a little bit sketchy.
I was trying to figure out what happened to my boy.
It was a short walk from where we parked the car over to the dug out.
And all of a sudden his countenance had completely changed.
So I started looking around trying to figure out what was going on.
Why did he look so insecure and fearful?
All of a sudden, I realized that as we were going toward the dug out, we were walking past some kids from another team.
They were all laying on the grass underneath the shade of an oak tree getting ready for the next game.
As I passed them, I could see this was the team we were about to play next, kept walking and I kept getting a look at these boys.
And when I looked at them, I realized what my son’s problem was.
We had faced this team before we had faced them earlier in the season.
And when this team had played my son’s team earlier in the season, they had annihilated us.
It had been a complete embarrassment, a complete upset. This team right here, y’all.
They were serious baseball players, but we had to walk right by them to get to the dugout.
As we walked past, there were two players, they were talking to each other. One was whispering to the other.
I think he thought he was whispering, but we could hear him.
He leaned over to the other one and he said, there goes that big kid from the Red Sox team, is he the one that hit the ball?
And it went over the fence? Yeah, he was the one at first base.
The one that caught any of the outs that we got in the game. That was him.
So that’s Jerry Shire. When my boy heard his name cross the lips of the opposing team members, those shoulders that had been hanging down all of a sudden, I watched them pop back again.
I watched his shin go up.
I watched him get a little swag back in his step as he headed over toward the dug out.
In fact, we had to bring him down a few notches before the game started.
It’s amazing really how your countenance changes when you really overhear and understand what the enemy thinks about you when he sees you coming.
It doesn’t mean that the challenge goes away. It means that in the face of it, you’re different.
Your stance is different because you recognize that when the enemy sees a daughter or a son of God coming his way, he’s shaking in his boots, not because of you, but because of the Holy Spirit of God that lives on the inside of me, I came to tell somebody today that even if you don’t believe what it is that the word of God declares to be true about you, you need to know that the enemy does.
He knows that every single thing that God’s word declares to be true about you, every word that has been declared over you in these last few days of this conference, even if you’re not convinced about it, the enemy is he knows that you have been forgiven.
He knows that there is therefore now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.
He knows that you have been given the victory.
He knows that you have been made competent by the spirit of God.
He knows that there is therefore now no condemnation for you or for me. No shame, no guilt.
He knows that you have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind.
And y’all, he knows that in the end we win.
And I’m saying what ashamed it would be for the enemy to believe more about your potential than you do.
What a shame it would be for us to go out of here with all of this inspiration that we have been given this investment of God’s word that He has gathered us together over the course of these days to worship in spirit and in truth and to hear His word declared true over our lives, what a tragedy it would be for us to walk out of here and still live like we were before we came through these doors.
So what the enemy will do is scatter challenge in front of your life because listen, you’re going back home to challenge y’all do know we’re going back home in a little while, right?
And don’t we wish we could wake up to this every single day, don’t we wish that we could have God’s word spoken over our lives with this much authority and power every single day and be in the presence of leaders who can lead us into the presence of God and worship every single day like this.
But the reality is we’re going back home.
The challenges of your university campus, the challenges of your home, your relationships, your friendships on your job.
Those challenges will be sprawled out in front of you when you get home and let me tell you something what the enemy hopes is that the sight of them will cause you to shrink back in so much fear and insecurity that you’ll never step up to the plate of being who God has called you to be.
Listen, if you’ve placed faith in Jesus Christ, I hope you know that the enemy understands He cannot destroy you.
He knows his chances are over of destroying you.
So he is going to spend the rest of his time and the rest of his energy just trying to discourage you, trying to distract you so that you’ll shrink back in fear and insecurity and not step up to the plate and be who God has called you.
To be, it is at least in part to this end that the Apostle Paul gives us a passage of scripture that has become a lifeline for me.
In fact, I was talking with uh Christine yesterday, Chris and I have known each other for a very long time, very close friends and she was asking me what I was gonna speak on and I had several thoughts of directions that I was uh leaning toward.
But in the end, we, as we were talking, the question came up, if there was only one thing you could say to them, if there’s only one message that you ever have the opportunity to tell these students, these young people that will be gathered together on this occasion, what would that message be?
And there was one thing that immediately popped into my heart and my mind for you.
At the end of this year’s Passions Passion conference, the words of the Apostle Paul, he writes them in the book of Ephesians.
Listen. Let me just tell you quickly.
Before I read this passage, you got, if you, if you’ve not read the book of Ephesians, you gonna have to read the book of Ephesians.
Y’all listen. It’s, it’s like for real, the Apostle Paul, y’all know he was a bad boy.
He gave us most of what would become the New Testament letters written to first century believers that now disciple us and help us to mature as believers.
And as the body of Christ.
And scholars say that of all of Paul’s writing really the cream of the crop.
The cherry on top of the cake is Ephesians because in the book of Ephesians, y’all, he just spends the first half of the book just rehearsing who you are as a daughter or a son.
He wants to make sure you step up to the plate.
Rise to the occasion of who you’ve been recreated in Christ to become those of you who placed faith in Jesus Christ last night, who stood to your feet at the end of Pastor Louis’s message and you placed faith in Jesus, listen, the old has gone and the new has come.
You’re a daughter. You are son and you have full rights and privileges that have been granted to you.
You, the apostle Paul wants you to know what is the hope of his calling and choosing you.
He writes in the 1st and 2nd and 3rd chapter about the treasure that you have.
He wants you to know about the mercy that has been lavished upon you, the grace that has been given to you.
He wants you to know that if you’ve been rejected by everybody else, you’ve been hand picked, chosen and adopted by the one true God.
He wants you to know that if you’ve dug a pit of sin for yourself, that is so deep, you can’t find your way out of it that the mercy of God is so great and so grand that it can reach down into any pit and snatch you up out of it once and for all.
In fact, Paul gets so worked up that by the time he gets to the middle of the first chapter, he bursts out in a prayer and he says, I’m praying that the eyes of your heart would be open so that you would just know what is the hope of His calling and choosing you.
And after going over and over and on and on about the lavishness, the richness, the grace, the mercy, the goodness, the adoption that has been poured out over us, the forgiveness that has been granted to us.
He’s trying to figure out how do I close this letter to make sure they step up to the plate.
How do I put an exclamation point on passion 2018 to make sure that what God has given them?
They don’t hand over to the enemy as soon as they walk out the door.
And the Apostle Paul writes these words to us in Ephesians chapter six, beginning in verse 10.
He says, finally, you be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
He says, put on the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes.
Somebody say schemes against the schemes of the devil.
He says, we wrestle not, we struggle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness that are in the heavenly places.
He says, so therefore you might as well just go ahead and put down all the weapons of this world that aren’t working for you anyway and take up some weapons that actually have some power.
He says, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything to stand firm, he says, you ought to just stand firm.
Therefore, in these few verses of scripture, the apostle Paul begins to introduce to us a concept that has not been at least in the context of thus far in church uh development at that time had not been as overtly described as it is right now.
In Paul’s letter, he brings up the topic of spiritual warfare. He says, you have an enemy.
He says, I want to make sure that it’s loud and clear.
There are other places in the Old Testament and throughout, throughout the New Y’all where we can infer that we have a spiritual unseen battle going on.
But this is the first time that an author comes right out and says, you have an enemy and he is scheming against you that when you leave this place in just a little while, when I leave this place in just a little while, you need to know that there is an enemy.
He is against you. He is not for you.
He plans to do anything and everything in his power to stir up challenge in your life enough to cause you to shrink back and not rise up and stand firm in the victory that you have been given in Christ Jesus.
That’s why the Apostle Paul says stand firm because you have an enemy, an enemy that wants you to think that just because he is invisible.
He is also fictional. He wants to be chalked up to nothing more than a caricature, a cartoon picture, a myth, a character for a kid’s nursery rhyme.
He doesn’t want you to recognize the influence that he has over your life possibly to, to cause you to never into the full expression of God’s grace and goodness in your life.
He is sinister. He is a master illusionist and he is a deceiver and he hopes to cleverly disguise himself behind life’s most pressing problems to where you will forget he is even there.
He wants you to point fingers at him or at her at your boss, at your parent, at that particular professor or your R A in your dorm.
He wants you to think it’s that advisor or it’s that financial problem.
Anything flesh and blood because he knows as long as we’re looking at the flesh and blood, we will direct all the wrong weapons at the wrong culprit, we’ll think our money will work.
We’ll think our rationale and logic will actually work. We think that the diploma we’re about to achieve and receive.
We’ll think the diploma will be worth it. We’ll think that the connections will work.
Anything natural, cannot take care of the supernatural.
When your problem is unseen and spiritual, you need weapons that work in that realm.
So the Apostle Paul says, you got to know first of all that your enemy is not the person you are sitting next to today, that your enemy is not your parent at home.
Your enemy is not that professor that is difficult to work with.
Your real enemy is not your boss on your part time job. Your real enemy is unseen.
He is hoping y’all that we will forget he’s there. He is the master deceiver.
So there’s a little church around the corner from my house in Dallas.
I’ve been taking my kids there since they were little uh to harvest festival.
That’s basically this church’s answer to Halloween.
So we will go there for harvest festival and this church has a good old fashioned trunk or treat.
Does anybody know what I mean when I say trunk or treat? Ok. All right.
So trunk retreat for those of you who are not clear on what that is.
That’s when members of the congregation volunteer, they volunteer to bring their cars into the parking lot on harvest festival night so that they can open up the trunk of their car.
So you go into the parking lot, all the trunks are open and each person has basically crafted a carnival game or some sort of fair game out of the trunk of the car.
So kids line up one trunk after the other, they play whatever the game is.
And then most of the time, whether they win or lose the person that owns that car, gives them a whole bunch of candy and sends them home.
We’re always so grateful. So we stand in line one car after the other waiting on bags of candy and we play one game after the other.
A few years ago. The biggest line, the longest line at the carnival wasn’t behind the A car.
It was behind the bed of a truck. It was really clever.
A huge truck had been parked in the parking lot and they put a step ladder right at the bed of the truck so that a kid could walk into the bed of the truck.
They had attached a table top which was about the same size as the bed of the truck.
They had attached it to the side of the truck, cut six holes into it, put some fabric, some drapery over it and out from those holes, every few seconds, a puppet would pop through.
They gave the kid a huge plastic mallet and the job of the kid was to run up and down the inside of the bed of the truck as he tried to hit the puppets on top of the head.
It was a homemade whack. A Mole game is what it was. And it was the longest line.
Me and Jude at the time, he was like four. Jude is my youngest.
Me and Jude are standing in line. We’re waiting on our turn behind us. There’s another kid.
He’s with his, his mom. He’s probably four or five as well.
And y’all, he was hysterical because he was annoyed at this whole situation and he was making sure she knew it.
He was first of all annoyed because mom, I don’t understand why I got to stand in this long line.
Didn’t we come to the carnival to have fun? This ain’t fun. Standing in line ain’t fun.
I have an idea. Mom. How about this?
How about I go play all these other games while you stand in line and hold our place.
And then when it’s our turn, I’ll come back and join you in line, but he was not only annoyed about the line.
The four year old was also annoyed because mom, I don’t even understand this game.
Why in the world would I waste all my energy running up and down the inside of that truck to hit the puppets on the top of the head.
If when I hit them on the head, they’re gonna disappear.
But then they’re just gonna come back as soon as I hit them on the head.
What’s the point of this game?
So everybody in the line is laughing hysterically because this four year old, this five year old is talking so much about all of his frustrations.
Finally, he gets so frustrated that he works himself into a frenzy to where all I saw out of my peripheral vision was a four year old flash running past me as he ran forward and he grabbed the drapery off of the table top and pulled it clean off underneath.
There were three adults with puppets on each hand.
That day, we all got a good laugh, but we also got a good lesson.
There is always something you can’t see influencing what you can.
And if you spend all of your time, your energy, your effort trying to hit at what you see popping up in your life, you’re gonna be so frustrated and by the way exhausted because as soon as you take care of one thing, another one is coming back unless you do what the Apostle Paul says, pull back the curtain and let the enemy know we got our eyes on you and we’re gonna use some weapons that actually work back there behind the curtain.
Y’all. I wish I had learned this when I was 18 1920 21 years old.
That that person, that physical problem isn’t really where you need to invest your energy.
Pull back the curtain, use the weapons that actually have power the Apostle Paul wants you to know that the tactics of the enemy are serious business.
And so he uses a specific word to describe them. He says schemes, listen to me.
He knows your weaknesses. He knows how to dangle what carrot at the right time in the right way to make sure you are snagged in particular.
Have you ever wondered or found curious that that particular carrot is always dangled in front of you when you are most tired, when you are most vulnerable.
When you happen to be most hungry, most alone, most weak, that particular carrot, the one that wouldn’t mess with your friend because it’s not her deal, it’s not his deal.
He’s not enticed by that. But the one that entices you always shows up at the right time, y’all, that’s not coincidence.
That’s a scheme. The enemy is trying to derail you.
He’s trying to make sure that you don’t walk in a manner worthy pleasing of the Lord that you come in here, but that you don’t go out of here, the, the purpose to live for the glory of God.
He’s trying to trip you up not only for his own benefit, but because he does not want you having access to everything that you are privy to as a rightful heir to the king of kings and the Lord of Lords.
It’s a scheme. So if he’s got tactics, we need tactics.
The Apostle Paul outlines them for us.
I’m just gonna read them to you because he says in verse 13, you need the full armor and here’s what they are.
Verse 14, he says, make sure that your loins are girded with truth.
Then he says, you need a breastplate and the breast plate is called righteousness.
And then he says, in verse 15, you gotta have something for your feet if you want any hope of being able to move forward successfully.
So your feet need to be shot with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.
And then not only that, but he says, there are some flaming missiles of the evil one that he fully intends to send, sailing into your path.
You’re gonna need a shield and the shield is your faith.
And then you know, there are lies, there are strongholds that he’s going to try to erect in your mind.
You’re gonna need something to protect your mind. He says you need a helmet and the helmet is your salvation.
But not only that, he says that you are going to need a sword, really a dagger of the spirit.
It was about 18 inches long or so, the one the Apostle Paul is referring to, you need a dagger so that when the enemy is all up in your space, you’ve got something close at hand to make sure that he stays at bay.
You need a dagger of the spirit and the dagger is called the what the word of God.
But y’all, he doesn’t stop at those six. Can I just say that there is one more?
In 18, verse 18, traditionally, it’s taught at six.
I really believe there are seven pieces of armor because in verse 18, he says, pray, the sense of pray, not like, you know, a prayer a day to keep the devil away, not like a prayer over your meal.
Just because that’s what your mama did and your grandmama did. And that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Not something quick and casual fervent, prioritized prayer, you can have victory if you don’t pray.
Do you hear what I’m saying to you?
Prayer is the key that unlocks the resources of heaven so that they can be unleashed on planet Earth.
Prayer is the key. He’s actually giving you to get all the good stuff down here because I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait to get to heaven to experience all that God has for me, any bits of heaven.
He plans to give me on earth. I want it right now. Prayer accesses the bits of heaven.
He intends to give you now and prayer listen. Prayer is what pushes the kingdom of darkness back.
It’s what pushes it back. That’s why Jesus said my house shall be called.
Not a house of good preaching, not a house of good singing, not a house of great spotlights and production, not a house of great cafes.
I hope you have all of that, enjoy it.
But Jesus said at the end of the day, my house better be called a house of prayer because spotlights and fog machines and great singing and great preaching that won’t necessarily push the kingdom of darkness back.
But when my people who are called by my name, when they will humble themselves and when they’ll pray, he says that I’m gonna hear from heaven.
I’m gonna heal the land. The enemy will have to bend the knee at the name of Jesus in prayer.
So pray.
There’s one other piece of armor I couldn’t get by without talking to you about it for a few moments.
Y’all still awake. Everybody gain. It’s in verse 14, he says, put on a breastplate called what?
Righteousness? Righteousness, Jerry.
And I live in a fairly rural part of Dallas Fort Worth.
We like it that way close enough to the city. We can get there quick, but it’s quiet and lazy.
We live on a little two lanes, sleepy road. Somebody’s got some horses over there.
There’s some cows over there and one of my closest friends lives across the street.
That’s why we like it because she’s got a pond in the front of her property.
So I’ll get the boys and the two fishing poles I bought on sale at the local Walmart.
I have a tackle box too that I got on sale there because, and you know, we need things we need extra hooks because the boys always lose the hooks, extra bobber thingies, you know, because we need extras of those.
I also have gloves in the tackle box because y’all know I don’t mind going fishing, but I ain’t gonna actually touch no fish.
So we walk across the street with whatever hot dog meat we’ve got left from the week because, you know, we’re professional fishermen.
So our hot dog meat is our bait.
We walk across the street, we stand in this little cove underneath some trees and we fish just right there.
Most of the time. Just little sun perch, stuff like that. We can catch quick in an hour.
We can catch like 10 or 12 fish.
Just a little quick, easy, little fishing trip every now and then though I’m feeling adventurous.
What that means is, is that we will get into my friend’s little row boat they bought on Craigslist.
It’s metal. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a little, it’s seaworthy. It can hold us up.
That’s all we need. I’ll swim, we’ll uh, row out into the middle and we’ll fish from there every now and then.
But I always think twice before I do it.
And here’s the reason because in order to get in it, we first have to turn it over, they leave it upside down as they should to drain water while nobody’s using it.
So I gotta turn it over to get in it.
And what I do know for sure is that when I turn this thing over, something is either gonna hop out from underneath it, someone’s gonna waddle out from underneath it or worst of all.
Oh, something’s gonna slither out from underneath that boat because the environment under there is moist and damp and perfect for critters.
Do you know what I’ve noticed?
Every single time we turn it over, something comes out and never once have I had to write a golden sealed invitation and send it into the brush nearby to invite the critters to come and join us at one o’clock today.
You’re welcome. Never once have I had to invite them because the environment created by the upside down boat is invitation enough.
Righteousness is right side up living that invites the sunlight of God’s favor and blessing upon your life.
Unrighteousness is upside down behavior that is out of alignment with the truth of God that you’ve been sitting underneath for the last few days.
It’s behavior that is out of alignment with the truth of God to where you don’t have to invite the enemy and come and make himself at home in your life.
You just keep living upside down and the environment created by upside down behavior is invitation enough.
Listen to me, you can pray against the enemy till you’re blue in the face.
But if you and I leave passion and we do not walk in holiness, we do not live in a lifestyle that is in alignment with the truth of God.
We will have wasted our breath in prayer. Paul says somebody’s gotta live right.
It’s flat out, straight up holiness. It’s holiness.
It’s a word that our, our grandmothers and our grandfathers back in the good old days when you went to church and you sat on a wooden pew.
It’s before some churches became so pre seeker sensitive. I remember y’all, I went, listen, I’m off track.
Listen, I went to a church and they said we are a pre seeker sensitive church.
And so we actually want to sort of uh in a way, they said dull down the actual literal name of Jesus just so we can get people in first, then we will, we will be more direct later on.
I said, oh, you have invited the wrong person because there used to be a day and time where it was just black and white where there were fewer gray areas and tolerance.
Yes, come as you are, but don’t stay as you are holiness, brothers and sisters.
I implore you by the mercies of God to walk in a manner worthy of this calling by which you have been called that every bit of truth that you have received this weekend to align your lifestyle to it, to not determine that you will still dig your heels into the ground and live immorally or speak immorally or do the things, habits and lifestyles and choices and relationships that you know, are outside of alignment with the truth of God.
Turn the boat right side up so that you can invite the favor of God on your life.
The Apostle Paul says, righteousness is your breastplate. The Roman army.
In the first century, they had many pieces of armor as you know, but the breast plate would have been one of the most critical the reason why was because it obviously protected the most vital organ they had their heart.
The heart is the lifeline for your physical well being.
All of the blood flow, the vitality, the energy that you need to function in every level of your life comes from the vitality of your physical heart.
What the physical heart is to the physical life.
Your spiritual heart is to your spiritual life, all of the vitality, the energy that you need to be who God has created you to be, to have fervency in your prayer life, to follow him with passion and with fire, to read the Bible and not just be ink on a page, but you hear his voice speaking to you to have clear reception between you and the Holy Spirit.
You need a vital spiritual heart.
That’s why if I were your enemy more than all else, I’d be after your heart because one shot to the spiritual heart will wipe you out.
Your spiritual heart is comprised of four things, your mind, the way you think your emotions, the way you feel your ambitions, what your purpose to do and your conscience, your conscience is not the voice of God, but your conscience is like this firing.
That helps this microphone amplify my voice.
The the conscience is the microphone that the Holy Spirit uses to help you hear the voice of God.
So if I were your enemy, I’d be after your heart because if I could get to your heart, that would mean I would have automatic access to your mind.
Now, I could tinker with your thinking, I’d have automatic access to your emotions.
I can mess with the way you feel and make sure they’re out of alignment with the truth of God.
I can mess with your ambitions to where, what you wanna do is totally out of alignment with what God wants you to do and more than all else, I’d wanna make it sure I have a shot to your heart so that I can short circuit the wires between you and the Holy Spirit.
Now, you can’t even hear God speak to you because you didn’t have a breastplate on the Apostle.
Paul says holiness is your breastplate. Holiness blocks you from a full frontal attack of the enemy.
Holiness keeps the enemy at bay to where when he comes looking around for some people that he can infiltrate some upside down environments that he can fester in.
He can’t find that with me or with you because we’ve chosen right side up living, aligning ourselves with the truth of God breastplates in place, securing us against the schemes of the enemy holiness is your breastplate.
I came to tell you to live right?
I came to tell you not to just have heard all of this to go home and live in accordance with it, be ye molly, not by your power, not by your might, but by the spirit of God.
There is no relationship you’re in.
But if it is out of alignment with the truth of God, that the Holy Spirit Himself won’t help you to sever so that you can walk in holiness.
There is no lifestyle you are living that is too uh that you’re too wound up in that you can’t break free from no matter how you feel in this moment, you can walk in holiness.
There is no way you have been speaking no addiction that you have no habit that you have been festering in your life that you have been harboring in your life, that the Holy Spirit won’t empower you to break free from so that you can walk underneath the banner, the favor of holiness in your life.
Be ye holy. Y’all. Listen, listen back in our grandma and our grandparents days, great grandparents.
They wanted to honor God more than they wanted to impress people.
See the problem with Instagram and Twitter and social media.
If there’s a problem, y’all the problem is we want this, we want to be impressive.
And if I’m worried for our generation, it is that we are impressive, but we don’t have breastplates on it is that we have the applause of people and our selfies are perfectly lit and we have a whole bunch of friends and a whole bunch of Instagram likes and people are following us and the enemy is thrilled because we have sacrificed holiness on the altar of impressing people.
You gotta live for the applause of heaven.
You got to decide I will not be politically correct before I will choose to be holy.
I will not be impressive before I will choose to be holy.
I may not be the the the person that everybody wants to be around.
I may not be the most impressive.
But what I will be is holy because the time is coming y’all where we are gonna see our savior face to face and when we see him, he will not ask us how many Instagram followers we had.
He will not ask us how many friends liked our post.
He will not want to see the selfies that we took.
When we see him face to face, he’s gonna ask us, did we do business with his son Jesus Christ?
And then, and then we’re going to give an account and I don’t know about y’all, but I’m looking for well done.
I want a well done.
I want Jesus to look at me and say you did the thing, girl.
Not because they bought the books, they bought the Bible study, they saw the movie.
No, you did the thing because you honored me.
Whether with an audience of one or an audience of 30,000, you honored me.
Yeah, I came to tell you brothers and sisters walk with integrity.
Be in the dark who you are in the light.
Everything that your God has entrusted to you over these last few days, the enemy does not mind.
He doesn’t like, but he doesn’t mind that you heard him. He didn’t mind. You came here.
What he minds is if you leave here and live by what you heard.
Hm.
Crazy father. If you’re here, if you’re in this room, stay standing.
If you’re in this room or one of the other arenas that are at home.
And you know, you are living in a way that is out of alignment with the truth of God.
Your breastplate is not in place.
You are open to full frontal attack by the enemy because you haven’t guarded yourself with Holy Living.
And maybe you’re in a situation where you’ve been trying to live, right?
But by your own strength and power, you just can’t seem to pull it off and you need the Holy Spirit to do what he does to set you free, to empower you, to rise up in victory, to step up to the plate and hit a home run for the kingdom of God.
Y’all remember y’all remember in the lion king?
Simba’s messing with the hyenas. And he’s like, and they’re like, seriously.
And he does it again and they’re like, you gotta be kidding. He does it again.
And they’re like, no, you’ll never take us down. You’re too weak, you’re too small.
You’re too puny by yourself. He tries it one more time.
He lets out his best roar but it sounds like something big and giant and it echoes off of the mountains nearby and the enemy enemies go running away.
Not because he was the roar, but because his daddy had come up behind him, behind you.
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